


Kindergarten (Online) Diaries

by elisela



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, M/M, Teacher Buck, no beta we die like men, quarantine fic, zoom fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:47:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23435647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisela/pseuds/elisela
Summary: Buck claps his hands together. “Alright, kids!” he exclaims. “I can’t believe I haven’t seen you all in two weeks! Now, I turned all your microphones off so--just like when we’re in school--you have to raise your hand to answer a question or if you want to say anything. No, Kevin, see--we can’t hear you, bud. You have to raise your hand, so I can turn your microphone on. Kevin. Kevin. Just practice--there you go. What’s up, buddy?”“Mr. Buck, can I go to the bathroom?”
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Comments: 40
Kudos: 517





	Kindergarten (Online) Diaries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [matan4il](https://archiveofourown.org/users/matan4il/gifts).



> There are a lot of good things in my life right now but the buddie discord and my own 19 kindergarten kids are right up there ... so this was inevitable, but thanks to matan4il for the push.

“Did you remember to pack your lunch, dear?”

Eddie’s attempt to distract Buck, to settle him a little, bounces off of Buck harmlessly with a roll of his eyes. His boyfriend had spent the morning flying around the house, picking up two weeks worth of discarded clothes, empty plates and glasses, and library books lying open, their spines permanently broken (that one earned Christopher a _look_. Eddie knows that Buck has always been fine with marking books, making them your own, but only if they were _actually_ your own). And now, house decluttered, he was rocking his body at a slightly frantic pace, eyes searching around the room for anything that didn’t belong.

With no home office, they’d done the negotiations the night before. Christopher would do his work at the kitchen table, and Buck would have exclusive use of the living room for his meetings. Eddie, who had no meetings and nothing to do, was unceremoniously told to remain in his room by his son, who was absolutely set on showing that he could get things done on his own.

Eddie is not complaining. Three whole, glorious hours to himself every day? He knows they’re in the middle of a pandemic and all, but Abuela always did tell him there’s a silver lining. He loves his boys more than anything, but--

“Ten minutes,” Buck announces, like the other occupants of the house had anything to do with his class meeting. Truthfully, Eddie is glad that Buck finally gets to work. Unlike Eddie, he hadn’t chosen to stop working, the State of California had done that for him. The first four days had been great; movie nights, goofing off with Chris, whispering secrets into the night of their dark room like they had back when they’d first gotten together. 

(They’d come a long way from those first few days, after Buck’s leg refused to heal and he’d left the fire department for good, deciding that a desk job was not what he wanted for his life. Two weeks of what Buck called “self-reflection”--and Eddie called wallowing--later, he’d shown up at Eddie’s house with a stack of textbooks in hand and announced he was getting a teaching degree.)

But slowly, their quarantine paradise had given way to boredom and anxiety, so when Buck got the news that he would begin teaching online, Eddie had breathed out a sigh of relief, even if he did privately wonder how one was supposed to teach nineteen kindergarten students via Zoom. An idle Buck was fine once in a while, but Eddie knows he’s been itching under the skin to see his kids again, to look into their eyes and see they were okay, or to help them get what they needed. 

Five minutes. Buck is settling himself in front of his laptop, a stack of papers on his right and a handful of counting cubes scattered on top of them. To his left, there’s a stack of books that his cellphone is wedged between--his own makeshift document camera. Eddie has just enough time to grab some snacks before Chris and Buck have to get started, so he just kisses Buck’s cheek, says, “enjoy your class meeting,” and wanders away.

His exile lasts all of three minutes before he finds himself sneaking out. He’ll just check on Chris, he decides--until Chris catches him lounging next to the door and waves him away. And, well, Eddie’s always loved watching Buck with his students, so it couldn’t hurt to hover just out of sight, listening to Buck greet students as they virtually enter their meeting. 

Buck claps his hands together. “Alright, kids!” he exclaims. “I can’t believe I haven’t seen you all in two weeks! Now, I turned all your microphones off so--just like when we’re in school--you have to raise your hand to answer a question or if you want to say anything. No, Kevin, see--we can’t hear you, bud. You have to raise your hand, so I can turn your microphone on. Kevin. Kevin. Just practice--there you go. What’s up, buddy?”

“Mr. Buck, can I go to the bathroom?”

Eddie barely stops the snort of laughter that bubbles up inside him. Buck wouldn’t mind if Eddie was in the room--but he’d made it clear the night before that he had hoped to provide a sense of normalcy for his students, a structure to their day … which did not include Eddie laughing in the background.

“You--of course. You don’t have to ask, Kevin, you can just go. But maybe tomorrow you can--you all can--try to use the bathroom before. Anyway! We have a lot to do today, so let’s get started. Give me a thumbs up if you all have your supplies. Okay … okay … Tommy, where’s … well, I hope you went to go get it. Everyone else--no, Leo, that’s not for cutting. Please put the scissors down. I know you all want to get started, but we’re just going to wait for Tommy to get back with his supplies, we want to make sure that everyone can do the work _together_.” 

It continues for some time, but for as long as Eddie watches, Buck never loses his patience, just gently leads his kindergarten class through reading one of the texts in the supply bag that Eddie had helped him put together and drop off on his student’s doorsteps (“if I don’t ask,” Buck had said of his administration, “they can’t say no”). 

Thirty minutes into it and as far as Eddie can tell, they’ve gotten very little actually done, but Buck lets them take a quick break before they jump into math. “Does anyone have anything to share?” he asks, then laughs and calls on a student who excitedly announces that his dog had puppies. 

“Nine of them!” the little boy says, and Eddie hopes like hell that he doesn’t _offer_ one to Buck because he’s pretty sure that Buck would not say no.

“That’s so cool, dude!” Buck says. “Alright, I need everyone to grab ten blocks from their bag, we’re going to start working on math. Do you notice anything about your blocks? Celeste?”

“What are the puppy’s names?”

“Oh, good question, we’ll save that one for later,” Buck says. “What does everyone notice about their blocks? Go ahead, Jaz.”

“How old are your puppies, Leo?”

“Let’s focus back on math here, kids, we’ll talk about the puppies when we’re done, I promise. So your blocks are split into two different colors, right? How many of each color do you have? Anthony?”

“My mom says I can’t have puppies.”

Eddie bites his tongue, hard. Buck will never forgive him if he laughs. He should go, he knows that, he’s got chips, salsa, a beer (so what if it’s 11:00 in the morning?) and the second book in a really great series waiting for him. He should go. He should leave Buck to it.

He stays.

“Class, _please_ , I promise that we’ll get to the puppies, let’s just focus on math,” Buck pleads. “Okay, so we have five of each color. I want everyone to take three blue blocks, and three green blocks, and write out your equation like this.” He scribbles something on the paper underneath his makeshift document camera. “What did we come up with? Leo?”

“Mr. Buck, one of the puppies is peeing! On the _floor_!”

Eddie loses it. Silently, thank God, but the type of laughter that makes his shoulders shake and his stomach hurt. He sinks down against the wall, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Sweet Buck, who tried so _hard_ and is just the kindest and has such a goodness about him, is having his carefully planned class fall apart, and Eddie is laughing like an asshole about it. He should really pull himself together, offer his boyfriend moral support. 

Unfortunately, his boyfriend appears in front of him before he’s able to do so. 

“Sorry,” Eddie says hastily, pushing himself off the ground. “Sorry for laughing, Buck, I swear, I’ll go-”

Buck sighs, but the left side of his mouth quirks up. “No need, I let them go,” he says. “We were never gonna recover after that.”

Eddie reaches up, squeezes Buck’s shoulder before pulling him close. “There’s always tomorrow,” he says, and Buck draws in a quick breath.

“I have to do this for the _rest of the year_ ,” he moans. “Is it too late to go back to Bobby and ask for that desk job?”


End file.
